There was a Merchant-Burgess of Edinburgh of the name of Thomas Smith.  The Smith pedigree has been traced a little more particularly than the Stevensons’, with a similar dearth of illustrious names.  One character seems to have appeared, indeed, for a moment at the wings of history:  a skipper of Dundee who smuggled over some Jacobite big-wig at the time of the ’Fifteen, and was afterwards drowned in Dundee harbour while going on board his ship.  With this exception, the generations of the Smiths present no conceivable interest even to a descendant; and Thomas, of Edinburgh, was the first to issue from respectable obscurity.  His father, a skipper out of Broughty Ferry, was drowned at sea while Thomas was still young.  He seems to have owned a ship or two—­whalers, I suppose, or coasters—­and to have been a member of the Dundee Trinity House, whatever that implies.  On his death the widow remained in Broughty, and the son came to push his future in Edinburgh.  There is a story told of him in the family which I repeat here because I shall have to tell later on a similar, but more perfectly authenticated, experience of his stepson, Robert Stevenson.  Word reached Thomas that his mother was unwell, and he prepared to leave for Broughty on the morrow.  It was between two and three in the morning, and the early northern daylight was already clear, when he awoke and beheld the curtains at the bed-foot drawn aside and his mother appear in the interval, smile upon him for a moment, and then vanish.  The sequel is stereo-type; he took the time by his watch, and arrived at Broughty to learn it was the very moment of her death.  The incident is at least curious in having happened to such a person—­as the tale is being told of him.  In all else, he appears as a man ardent, passionate, practical, designed for affairs and prospering in them far beyond the average.  He founded a solid business in lamps and oils, and was the sole proprietor of a concern called the Greenside Company’s Works—­’a multifarious concern it was,’ writes my cousin, Professor Swan, ’of tinsmiths, coppersmiths, brass-founders, blacksmiths, and japanners.’  He was also, it seems, a shipowner and underwriter.  He built himself ’a land’—­Nos. 1 and 2 Baxter’s Place, then no such unfashionable neighbourhood—­and died, leaving his only son in easy circumstances, and giving to his three surviving daughters portions of five thousand pounds and upwards.  There is no standard of success in life; but in one of its meanings, this is to succeed.

In what we know of his opinions, he makes a figure highly characteristic of the time.  A high Tory and patriot, a captain—­so I find it in my notes—­of Edinburgh Spearmen, and on duty in the Castle during the Muir and Palmer troubles, he bequeathed to his descendants a bloodless sword and a somewhat violent tradition, both long preserved.  The judge who sat on Muir and Palmer, the famous Braxfield, let fall from the bench the obiter dictum—­’I